Secession bid indicts proponents

Of the many ways some Americans have expressed disapproval with the presidential election's results, the desire to secede from the United States by far is the most fascinating.

The idea seemed to start after the Nov. 6 presidential election was decided. The election's results, particularly the race for the White House, were outcomes secession advocates find intolerable.

To say this movement is an embarrassment puts it mildly. There is little to unite secession proponents other than their disgust of President Barack Obama and their difficulty accepting he won re-election.

Disappointment because Mitt Romney didn't win is one thing. Advocating secession is simply childish. It is akin to an adolescent removing his or her bat and ball from a neighborhood baseball game because it didn't go the way he or she expected.

Nevertheless, the secession idea has garnered hundreds of thousands of advocates in all 50 states. We know this because of the apparent birthplace of the secessionist movement - a White House website.

The Obama administration created "We the People," a petition site to, "Give all Americans a way to engage their government on the issues that matter to them," according to the website's home page. The burning issue for secessionist website visitors is to create their own government and leave the one they already have.

There are practical matters to be resolved, of course. So far, online petitioners from all 50 states have signed on to the secession petition.

The question, though, is where the secessionists' new nation would be.

When the Confederate States of America broke away from the nation, the confederacy's defense of slavery was debatable. But there was no question about the Confederacy's geography.